The capabilities of contemporary society are immeasurably greater than ever before - which means the scope of society's domination over the individual is immeasurably greater than ever before.
MARCUSE

Monday, March 28, 2011

POSTSCRIPT

Richard Osley, a journalist from the CNJ (an acronym that will need no spelling out for Londoners who live north of the Thames), has written two interesting posts about Saturday's demo.

The first is about the Labour Party's response to the march. This was certainly the first march I have been on (I'm 30) where Labour banners gave the streets a red glow - indeed, I can't recall a march in the last ten years at which a party member would have been seen dead. "Red flag after red flag showed the different branches of the party on parade: presumably this means a Robin Hood tax will be in the party’s next manifesto," suggests Richard. "We’ll see." I am sure that the scale of the march on Saturday will be keeping Ed Miliband up at night far more than it will disturb Cameron or Clegg. Labour, not untypically, are way behind the rest of us in this debate. It is good to have their support, at least in name, but there are few signs yet as to how they might use this movement to the advantage of the people they claim, still, to represent.

And the second refers to Miliband's comparison of this struggle with that of the Suffragettes, and rebuts the claim that the Suffragettes achieved their objectives through peaceful means alone. I wrote earlier that we should stop apologising for acts of violence against the property of the people who are the cause of these cuts - if the Suffragettes had simply turned up, chanted a few slogans, cheered on a Labour Party leader and then went home, we would not be talking about them today.